Internet Learning Materials Introduction

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Internet Learning Materials for MBA Students

Funded by the Foundation for Management Education

Introduction

The exponential growth of the Internet has surprised many and it is quickly becoming the norm for students to use it for both work and pleasure. UK students have the privilege of accessing the Internet via the Joint Academic Network (JANET), which provides a fast connection to Web sites all over the world. The opportunities for teaching, learning and research are, therefore, boundless.

Research and Development

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the four UK higher education funding bodies, which funds and manages JANET, among other initiatives, has been active in promoting and funding research into best use of the Internet for academic purposes. In particular, the projects funded under the Electronic Libraries (eLib) programme have been active in researching and developing ways in which the chaos of the Internet can be organised. Projects have been funded to investigate how resources relevant for individual subject areas, such as business and management, can be organised and accessed from a single Web site. The result has been the development of information gateways such as Biz/ed and the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG). For more information on this work see:

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/

Approach

The Foundation for Management Education recognises the strength of the work that has taken place in under the auspices of JISC and has funded the publication and free distribution of these Internet learning materials. Recognising the need to locate quality resources on the Internet, these materials are a complementary resource which give students and staff an introduction to finding Internet resources to support MBA programmes.

Written by experts in their respective academic fields, each chapter contains full contact details and some brief biographical background. Each author has written an introduction to his section which highlights why he uses the Internet and sets the scene for the sections to come. Each chapter is individual in approach, reflecting the individuality of the author and the differences between subject areas.

Practicalities

Some of the sites chosen by the chapter authors include documents and reports which are only available in Portable Document Format (PDF). It has become increasingly common for working papers, so-called grey literature, to be made available in this way, as it allows the document to be viewed as the author intended. It is necessary to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these files. Many higher education institutions (HEIs) will already have this available from computing networks, but it is also freely available from:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Catherine Sladen
Editor